Review: Home Striker - Training Golf Ball

Hitting Golf Balls in your Backyard!
Wouldn’t it be great to hit golf balls in your backyard?  I know I certainly would enjoy hitting driver, 7-iron, or a 60*wedge right outside my back door.  There has been basically 2 options up to this point, either get a net to hit into or a foam ball that you can hit.  Those have their limitations though.  A net can be pretty expensive if you get a good one and you might miss it with a poor shot which could turn out even worse.  A foam ball will be safe around the house, but just doesn’t have that same feel off the club.  Now there is an alternative, the Home Striker, which allows you to hit a real ball without a net yet very limited distance.
Home Striker is a pretty basic concept, take a ball and put a parachute on it.  It is very similar to those toy soldiers that you could throw up in the air and watch them parachute back down.  Home Striker took a Titleist NXT Tour, drilled a hole in it and attached a handkerchief as the parachute.

It is simple, yet effective.  I took them out in my backyard and hit them with every club in my bag.  They feel just like you would expect, a regular golf ball.  The distance varies based on the club, the furthest I hit my driver was about 25 yards.  Since my yard is a small city lot, I hit it a few times over the fence into my neighbors yard.  But with short irons and wedges I could hit it all around my yard without finding any trouble.  You just put the ball down with the parachute (or dampener as they call it) on the far side of the ball. Maybe the first couple swings it is distracting, but it really didn’t take long to get comfortable hitting it.  Over time the dampener gets dirty, but not really a big deal since you are just practicing your swing.

The biggest concern is going to be parachute failure (not falling off, but not opening); I didn’t experience any.  I did from time to time notice that the ball went even shorter on some shots.  The distance wasn’t always consistent, but I didn’t have any fliers that suddenly took off across the neighborhood.  But I still would NEVER aim it at my house or my neighbors just in case, but hitting it across the grass in the back yard I didn’t worry about it.

 

The only really short coming of this product is that you really can’t tell what your results would be with a regular ball.  It doesn’t go far enough or high enough to really tell if you slice it or hook it.  But I think if you just want to work on your swing, these work great. 

I found that my two boys actually enjoyed them more than I did.  They could spend hours in the backyard hitting them around, and I didn’t have to worry about hearing breaking glass either, the only downside of letting them hack it around the backyard is what they do to the grass.  It seemed best to have them use a tee or little mat to hit them around. 

The HomeStriker is not complicated, and it is not expensive; just a fun, simple way to hit some real golf balls in your backyard.

For more information: HomeStriker

Quick Hits
+Hitting a real golf ball
+Limited flight
+Simple

–Limited feedback
–inconsistent parachute distance(but never bombed one)